Studies of prison violence typically focus either on individual-level aggression or large-scale collective acts. Most past work consists of case studies, limiting the generalizations from the results. The present study used data from 371 state prisons and measures of both individual and collective violence and attempted to identify the structural, managerial, and environmental determinants of prison disorder. Findings suggest that poor prison management is a predictor of rates of assault toward inmates and staff. However, the likelihood of prison riots is largely independent of structural, managerial, and environmental factors. The article also discusses the implications for public policy.

Constructionists argue that crime booms are rare, modernizationalists predict that booms have been limited to industrializing nations, and globalizationalists claim that booms are universal among nations since World War II. We define crime booms as rates that increase rapidly and exhibit a positive sustained change in direction and use econometric methods to test for booms with homicide victimization rates for 34 nations, 1956 to I998. Twelve nations satisfied our criteria for booms-too many to support constructionists, but too few to support globalizationalists. In support of modernizationalists, 70% of industrializing nations qualified as having booms, but fewer than 21 % of industrialized nations did. Future research should explain industrializing nations that do not experience booms and industrialized nations that do.

The idea that crime and deviance are explained mostly by access to opportunities-especially those provided by employment, income, education, and family s t a b i l i F i s one of the most powerful assumptions about crime in postwar America. However, despite its importance, the actual relationship between opportunity measures and crime during this period remains little understood. while cross-sectional studies of these issues have become common, few longitudinal studies exist and those that do include a limited number of variables. Moreover, despite important differences in the history and experiences of African-Americans and whites during this period, researchers have assumed similar dynamics by race. In this paper, we use annual time-series data from 19.57-1988 to examine the effects of economic well-being, educational attainment, and family stability on rates of robbery, burglary, and homicide for blacks and whites. Our results show that these measures have different-usually opposite-effects on black and white crime rates during the period. In general, measures of opportunity have expected effects on white but not black rates. We consider the implications for policy and research.The idea that crime and deviance are explained mostly by access to opportunities-especially those provided by employment, income, education, and family stability-is one of the most powerful assumptions about crime in post-World War I1 America. Elements of this view are present in the early social disorganization writings of the "Chicago school" (Shaw et al., 1929; Thrasher, 1927) and in the influential "strain" theories of Merton (1938),

No abstract

No abstract